AFTER 19 YEARS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 7, 19 December 1932, Page 7

AFTER 19 YEARS

GERMAN SOLDIER SENTENCED.

"MAN WHO LOST THE WAR."

(United Press Association—By CableCopyright.) (Received 19, 11.30 a.m.) Berlin, Dee. 18.

Jager, known as ‘‘the man who lost the war," was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. "The Times" Berlin correspondent stated that, 19 years after the first German gas attack at Ypres, Jager, a German ex-soldier, is now on trial for treason at Leipzig for betraying the attack to the enemy. The evidence is based on an article by General Ferry, the French commander of the sector involved, and published in 1930, in which he alleged that Jager gave the position of the gas batteries and accused the French generals of failure to protect the troops. A representative of the Reichswehr Ministry pressed for Jager’s conviction and insisted that the French took measures to reduce losses, also to mitigate the effect of the attack. Jager denied desertion and betrayal and claimed that he strayed into the enemy’s trenches, and that the French deduced the imminence of an attack from a wadding pad he carried as part of his equipment.